11th Sunday Year B

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Parables

What is the point of parables? Why is Jesus so fixated on using them to get his message across to his listeners? Parables of seeds and sowing, of vines, vineyards and grape-pickers, of rough ground and smooth, of good men and not so good and so many more: what is the point?

Well, I think we would be as well to ask what is the point of so many of the Disney films that are offered to our children today? Films that speak of love and trust, of friendship  and care, of good triumphing over evil, of the need to strive hard for what we want against any and all barriers. What is the point of these films? What is it that makes them so successful time and time again?

Parables were ways to get Jesus’ message across to a people who didn’t go in for books and reading and certainly didn’t go in for the latest Disney epic. They were simple in their take on messages and communications: everything was pretty much by word of mouth. This was how they spread their news – word of mouth and this was how they relived and remembered their history – by word of mouth. Story-telling was a great art and a great necessity.

Jesus knew that to help the people understand the messages he was giving, he had to present them in a  simple format and use illustrations that they would take to, could digest and ponder and could learn from.

Speaking to them using illustrations and pictures from their everyday lives helped the people to see the essences of what Jesus was offering them. That their faith no matter how small and frail, like the mustard-seed, would be strong enough to  move mountains and could grow to be something momentous and grand.

That although they were the chosen people, they still had to work at growing their faith through all sorts of trials and tribulations to make it worthy of harvest and that they had to be aware of all the things that could get in the way of them growing their faith – distractions, ignorance, disinterest, lack of focus on listening, hearing and understanding – that all of these things were like the rough stony ground or weed-laden ground in which seeds, their faith, would lie and die.

These images of farming, of shepherding, of caring for grapes – these images were part of their daily lives. They could relate to them clearly and immediately. They could understand the problems and issues inherent with each scenario and could take the related messages back into their lives.

Jesus knew that his simple messages of love, love for the Father, love for the Son, love for each other and love for ourselves as individuals, still had to compete against the complexities and quantities of the Law that governed the Jewish people. He had to translate this simple message of love into something, an illustration, a picture, that the people could take up and recognise simply and easily and use it as a reference for their ongoing faith-development.

Love is the answer, whatever the question may be, love is the answer. Love is the seed. Love is the ground in which the seed is sown. Love is the vineyard that is nurtured, pruned, strengthened and love is the grape that is harvested.

And so back to the Disney films. How many of our children, and us as adults too, learn life’s messages from the Disney films of our time. That good will conquer evil if we but work together. That to live a life that is good, we should all aim to just do the next right thing. That one act of true love or kindness will melt a frozen or injured heart. Disney films are the carriers of the parable-messages of our day. They are ways and means of us teaching our children so many of the important messages of life, of love, of living. Disney no doubt are fully focused on the dollar-return and not on any altruistic point but – but they know what sells to children and parents alike. They know what messages are sought by children and adults. They know their audiences just as Jesus knew his.

Jesus used his parables to persuade the people that they had to wake up; they had to be more aware of what their responsibilities were and that they had to work consciously and deliberately to develop their faith in themselves and in others and to show it to everyone around them by how they lived their lives and how they treated each other.

We may not be farmers or shepherds or vine-growers and may not as readily understand the importance or impact of these parables but we can take them and compare and consider them against our lives today.

What sort of seed am I? What sort of ground am I? What do I do to care for my faith or that of my neighbour? How do I support them or me in the growing and harvesting of my faith? What do I understand my faith or the main messages of my faith to be? These were all questions that Jesus put to his audiences and he used parables to do just that. What would we use today to help us to see him more clearly, to follow Him more nearly, day by day by day?

If the parables work then great. If they don’t readily or easily then maybe Disney is the answer or at least one answer. Or maybe it is something else entirely. But we need to take charge and learn to understand what Jesus is telling us; what Jesus is asking of us. Love is the question and love is the answer. We need to ask, to listen, to ponder, to understand and to show.